I learned this morning that Mazda dealers in the UK are now accepting online service bookings directly through their individual dealers' websites. But hang on a second - haven't main dealers been doing this since the dawn of the internet? Well Yes and No. What's remarkable about Mazda's new innovation is that it allows a dealer to upload their own available time slots. This gives them greater control over their workshops and makes their dealer websites a truly useful business tool for the after-sales department.
Check out the video below and you'll see that what grabbed my attention was the wonderful simplicity of the service. Customers can key in the registration number of their car before choosing the most convenient dealer to carry out the work. Then the booking engine offers a selection of services specific to that particular make and model with the pricing clearly displayed. After you've chosen the work you want carried out you can browse the available slots and confirm your booking. It took me less than three minutes to complete a reservation (almost - I didn't want to cause trouble by submitting an actual booking so I left out the final step).
VRM input screen on Mazda's new online service booking solutionAn Impressive Step in Online Service Booking
It's certainly a significant evolution of the standard 'Book a Service' forms that are common across most of our Irish dealer websites. Booking forms are okay in that they send generic emails to the after-sales department but there's a lot of legwork afterwards. They usually have to be followed up and confirmed by a member of the after-sales team over the phone. After all nobody likes to be on the end of a 'no-show' in a busy workshop and unfortunately that's what can happen when an online service booking isn't properly confirmed.
True Customer Convenience
The thing that works really well with Mazda's website is the true customer convenience it offers. It's obvious that Mazda did their research beforehand and it won't come as a surprise to learn that
– Is it any different in Ireland?
Shameless Plug
A little plug for Motorcheck's B2B services here. For dealers or manufacturers interested in creating service booking forms like Mazda's - check out our business offerings here. We have the latest scheduled servicing data and repair times for every passenger car on the road in Ireland and can provide you with access to it over our state of the art data services. This way you can integrate our reg lookup into any web page, DMS or similar application. Interested? Give us a call on 01-8839230 and we can explore the possibilities.